Much of her clinical interest sits at an intersection most dental practices don't address directly: patients who find dental care genuinely difficult. Bright lights, unfamiliar sounds, the sensation of instruments, and lying back in a chair are significant sensory demands, and a patient who resists is frequently finding it intolerable rather than being uncooperative.
How she works
Resistance is usually information. A child who won't open their mouth, or won't tolerate brushing, is generally telling you something about what it feels like — and adjusting the experience works better than insisting.
The airway thread. How a child breathes affects how the jaw and palate develop, how they sleep, and how they eat. Persistent mouth breathing isn't cosmetic, and it connects findings that look unrelated — tooth grinding, disrupted sleep, difficulty concentrating.
Honest about what's contested. Areas like tongue tie treatment are genuinely unsettled, and the pages say so — including where the evidence gap runs against what's commonly recommended.
What Dr. Yana Pekarski, DDS reviews
A credential only means something when its limits are clear, so here are hers.
She reviews
- Dental and oral development
- Tooth and enamel conditions
- Jaw, bite, and temporomandibular joint content
- Tongue and lip ties
- Oral function, including feeding and airway
- Oral habits — pacifier use, bottle use, thumb sucking
- Sensory considerations in dental care
She does not review
- Sensory processing, motor, or rehabilitation content — reviewed by Dr. Eva Lassey, PT, DPT
- Speech-language pathology
- Mental health and behavioral conditions
- Medical and pharmacological content
Clinical background
Her practice focuses on holistic dental care — the connections between oral structure, breathing, sleep, and feeding, and how difficulty in one area shows up in another.
That includes working with patients who have sensory processing differences, developmental conditions, or dental anxiety, using behavior management and sensory-aware approaches to make treatment possible for people who find a standard appointment hard.
She works alongside occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists where oral function, feeding, and airway overlap — which is frequently.
Selected areas
Corrections
If something reviewed under this byline is wrong, we want to know. Email hello@drsensory.com with the page and what's incorrect. We check it, correct it if warranted, and update the page date.
That applies to clinicians too. If we've mischaracterized something in your field, we'd rather hear it.
Also on DrSensory
Dr. Eva Lassey, PT, DPT
Physical Therapist · Founder of DrSensory
Lead author across the site's therapy and condition libraries.
Nicole Brewer, CPC, LCADC
Mental & Behavioral Health Reviewer
Reviews the site's anxiety, trauma and behavioral regulation content.
Last updated August 26, 2026. Content on DrSensory is for general educational purposes and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.